


Not So Scarce

by Arsenic



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28440909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: About half a year after Tony's death, Nebula comes back to the farm, needing some time away from a sister who doesn't know her and a team that's not really hers.  Or maybe needing some time with her family.  Depends on how you look at it.
Relationships: Nebula & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Nebula & Pepper Potts, Nebula & Tony Stark
Comments: 79
Kudos: 135





	Not So Scarce

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kai (kaiz)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiz/gifts).



> This prompt came from Kaiz, who donated to SMYAL for a social justice auction done muuuuuch earlier in the year, I appreciate them supporting LGBTQIA youth, giving me this awesome story idea, and being super patient about me finishing it.
> 
> Thanks also to egelantier for the help with characterization and emotional arc and just making the story better in general.

_Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think._  
-L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Nebula is dipping her toes in the lake when Pepper comes and sits down next to her. Looking over the surface of the water, she says, “I meant to message. Before I was here.”

“Only necessary if you wanted a particular brand of cereal. Morgan won’t eat anything that’s not Apple Jacks at the moment.”

Nebula looks over at Pepper. She knows it’s a joke, it’s the kind of joke Tony might have made, only his smile would have been a challenge. Pepper’s holds welcome and concern.

She wants to explain why she’s here, at Pepper’s doorstep, not cleaning up any of the messes left by the man who’d raised her. She wants to offer something to Pepper to explain why she’s asking for a moment of shelter and rest and a place to grieve, when really, she’s not even certain she has the right to grieve. She knows that in comparison to Pepper, she does not.

If there are good words to describe how she just doesn’t know where else to be right now other than in this place, she cannot find them. She doesn’t know how to talk about the way Gamora looks at her like a stranger, a stranger upon whom Gamora cannot turn her back. How Nebula just wants to be near people who won’t treat her as a potential threat, just for a bit. How, even without Tony, this is the only spot in the whole range of galaxies she thought might work. 

When the silence has stretched to a nearly uncomfortable point, Pepper squeezes her shoulder and says, “Come, you left so quickly after the service. There’s something I need to show you.”

* * *

_Five Years Earlier_

The first time Nebula seeks Tony out in the Between—as she thinks of the five years that lapse between battles with her father—it is out of a desperation. She’d been determined not to see Tony again once he was safe on earth’s surface. Nebula has almost infinite storage capacity for memory and facts, and very few remembrances worth keeping.

Tony’s sharp-edged, wild, terrified kindness on that ship is one she holds dear. It sits next to the first time Gamora seemed to actually see her, rather than a rival. It is singular.

She is not one to expect lightning to strike twice. Taking what she can get and guarding the few important things she gathers fiercely has kept her alive.

When one of her completely internal implants suddenly begins rejecting, she injects herself with a local, disinfects the area and her hands, and opens herself up. The infection is already causing the area to be hard to tell what’s actually happening, and there are parts she can’t even see.

Rocket catches her as she’s attempting to remove the implant and swears at her in languages she suspects are made up, as well as quite extensively in English. He also glues her back together and shoots her with a sedative. By the time she wakes up, they’re headed toward Earth. 

“You could handle it,” she hisses at Rocket, beyond irate that he’s taken this decision out of her hands.

“Only if I want to maybe accidentally kill the only fucking person I have left, fucking numbskull dipshit mcdoodle,” he yells back, surprising both of them into an awkward silence.

When she finds her voice, she says, “Okay,” and they spend the rest of the trip avoiding each other in the polite way that people who have no interest in dealing with their emotions excel at.

* * *

They set down on Tony’s lawn in the dark of night. He comes off the front porch swearing at them for waking the baby. Rocket immediately enters the verbal fray. Nebula just thinks she should have known. He needed her in that ship, needed another sentient being, someone who could help with repairs. Someone with a few parts she could run without.

She loses her balance and falls down the gangplank, dry heaving into the grass. It’s been a while since she’s thought about eating, at least there’s that.

And then Tony is there, his hands cool against her remaining flesh. “Whoa, hey there. How does the other guy look, huh?”

Even smiling hurts, but she quirks her lips. To Rocket, Tony says, “Help me get her inside. I’ve got some stuff to make her comfortable while I figure out the problem.”

“Not the lab,” Rocket says, even though the two of them have never discussed how they were made.

“No,” Tony agrees without any hesitation.

Instead she’s placed on a bed. It’s soft against the ache of swollen joints. There’s a sharp pinch on the top of her hand, and Tony says, “There we go, give that a moment, okay?”

Blinking down, she notices he’s already gotten an IV in her. Whatever’s in it burns for the first few seconds, but then, as he’s suggested, mutes everything, and for the first time since she cut herself open, it feels like she can take a breath without agony.

Tony squeezes her other hand, the one without the needle in it, and says, “You with us?”

She blinks at him. The sharp edges of starvation have faded from him, of course, but dark rims of exhaustion line his eyes. “Sorry for waking the baby.” 

“Nah, she’ll sleep, one of these days. I have it on good authority. Wanna tell me what the problem is?”

With her free hand, she points to the problem area. Tony peels her shirt up a bit and takes a look. After a moment he says, “Okay, that doesn’t look fun. Will you let me give you a sedative before I go in and clean that up? Your pet muppet can stay and watch me the whole time, promise.”

Rocket flips him off half-heartedly. Nebula says, “Okay. Thanks.”

“What are friends forged in the fire of near-death experiences for?” he asks, then injects the IV with the sedative, and gets to work.

* * *

_Present_

Pepper takes her down to Tony’s lab. So far as Nebula can tell, nothing has been changed. Pepper says, “Friday, can you call up the files for Nebula onto my tablet?”

“Of course, Ma’am.”

Pepper taps and swipes at the screen, bringing up what appears to be the model for a ship. Then, with her fingers, she pulls it out so as to show it in three dimensions. “He wasn’t sure you’d take money. He built this instead. And, ah, attached funds for maintenance.”

“So, money.”

“Yes, well, he had impulse control issues.”

Nebula reaches out for the lines of the ship but doesn’t actually touch the intersecting lights. She startles as Tony’s voice filters over the rooms’ comms. “Hey there, Blue’s Clues. If you’re listening to this, I’ve done something epic and heroic, or, alternately, Dum-E’s finally managed to do me in.”

Hearing his name, spoken by Tony no less, Dum-E whirls nearer to them and Pepper pets him soothingly. Nebula has a confusing flash of jealousy. She chooses not to have people touch her, doesn’t she?

Tony says, “Seeing as how you’re without adult supervision, I’ve equipped Rats of Nimbus, or RoN, as I call her, with an AI variant with Pepp’s voice, because she’s pretty adult-y, and if anyone can keep you out of trouble, it’s probably her.”

Nebula looks over at where Pepper is smiling ruefully at Dum-E, the corners of her eyes wet. Tony is still talking. “RoN’ll have your back. She’s offensively and defensively stacked, and comes with an entire first aid suite. She can tell you about her refurbishing and maintenance fund, which is invested through my network. In other words, don’t worry about it running out, you’re only using the interest, not the principal.”

There’s a pause, then, but she can hear Tony breathing. More quietly he says, “Thanks, kiddo. For the parts that kept us going long enough to be rescued. For having the guts to stand up to your own dad. For being the person you are. Remember you’re not alone, okay? Even discounting that band of weirdos your sister ran with, you’ve got Rhodey and Pepp, just for starters. And in case you do forget, RoN’s programmed so that Earth is labeled Home #1 in the directory.”

The second pause is long enough that Nebula thinks he’s done. Finally, he says, “Take care of yourself, Ms. Galaxy. You deserve—you deserve to be cared for.”

* * *

Nebula is still in the workshop, staring at the blueprints for RoN, when the door slides open and Morgan says, “Aunt Nibs!”

Morgan rushes her, bigger than she was at the funeral, but not by much. She’s sticky, as though she’s just had a snack and not washed properly. Nebula thinks she should mind more than she does. Instead, the purity of Morgan’s joy at seeing her is a rush, a balm against some of the spots that have rubbed raw under new-Gamora’s measured gazes. “Hi Mog.”

Morgan hadn’t been able to pronounce Nebula when she’d first begun speaking. Nebula couldn’t have explained exactly how they’d gone from Neb-oo or Nebbelah to Nibs, but she’s had the nickname for years now. The first few times Morgan had called her it, Tony had smirked and said, “Greetings from your proto-niece, Mog.”

That had stuck between the two of them as well. Morgan splays a sticky hand over the screen and says, “That’s RoN. Daddy made her.”

“Yeah,” Nebula says. One of these days the ease with which Morgan refers to Tony won’t run through Nebula like one of her circuits going haywire. Eventually.

“There you are,” says a familiar voice, and Nebula turns to see Rhodey making his way down the stairs. “Your mom said you’d disappeared on her.”

Morgan laughs. “Not disappeared! I’m right here!”

Rhodey huffs out a laugh. “You’re a mess is what you are, go upstairs and wash up, Squeak.”

“Morgan!” She shouts, as she passes him on the staircase.

Rhodey comes the rest of the way down and stands next to where Nebula is sitting. She looks over. “Pepper call you?”

“Tony set Friday to route through my systems upon his death. She keeps tabs on comings and goings from the cabin.”

Tilting her head, she asks, “Were you nearby?”

He smiles but doesn’t answer. Instead, he draws her up and into a hug that takes several minutes for her to relax into. Quietly, he asks, “You okay?”

“Tony made me a ship,” she tells him, which is not an answer.

“Yeah,” he agrees, stepping back to look at her. “I miss him, too. It’s okay to miss him.”

Eyes flickering up the stairs to where Morgan has fled, where Pepper is, then moving back to meet his gaze, she says, “He wasn’t mine.”

“You’re wrong, and even if you weren’t, I would tell you it doesn’t work like that.”

Nebula doesn’t argue. Rhodey’s usually right when it comes to Tony. And people. And all the things Nebula still struggles with.

* * *

_Four-and-a-Half Years Earlier_

The second Between visit happens because Natasha catches her after a check-in and asks, “Can you find some time to make it here?”

The truth is, most of the time what Rocket and Nebula do is go around helping resources be redistributed and planets get back on their feet as much as possible. There’s nothing urgent to be done, nothing keeping them in one place or another. “Yes. What do you need?”

“Someone to get eyes on Tony. Rhodey’s handling something for me, it’s had him away for over a couple of months. Bruce has asked for radio silence, Thor won’t answer my calls, and I don’t know that Tony’d let me or Steve in the front door.” Natasha doesn’t even bother hiding the sting of that from her face. 

“Be there in a week or so, red,” Rocket calls from over her shoulder at the controls. Nebula rolls her eyes, but nods.

Natasha says, “Stop by on your way out of dodge, huh?”

* * *

This time they land in the middle of the day. Pepper comes out of the house with the baby strapped to her front and says, “Get in here, it’s raining.”

The rain is torrential. Inside the cabin fires are going and Tony is nowhere to be seen. Pepper does a casual visual check of both of them. “All in one piece?”

“Red’s worried about your boy,” Rocket says.

“Tell her she could call me. I’d pick up my phone.”

Nebula says, “I will,” because she’s pretty sure Natasha doesn’t know that. 

Pepper tilts her head. “How is she?”

 _Alone,_ is Nebula’s instinctive response. She chooses instead to say, “She has things under control.”

Rocket makes a rude noise. Pepper opens her mouth, but at that moment Tony comes up into the main area, clearly having been working on something, if the state of his dishevelment is any indication, and says, “If it isn’t my favorite space goblins.”

“I brought you a space rock,” she tells him. 

He is immediately suspicious. “Did Rhodey put you up to this?”

Rhodey has absolutely put her up to this. “No.”

He narrows his gaze. “Are my lessons on how to bluff starting to rub off on you? I’m torn between being the proudest Papa Bear in Berenstein Land, and mortally offended that you and my best friend since the cradle are conspiring against me.”

She blinks and stores the part of that she needs to consider away. “You and Rhodey met in college.”

Waving a hand grandiosely, he explains, “But in our hearts, in our hearts,” he punctuates each word with a press of his hand to his chest, “brothers.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Rocket takes the chance to say, “It’s a pretty cool space rock. I’ll take more if you don’t want the sample.”

Nebula controls her desire to show some sign of appreciation for Rocket’s cooperation. 

“Space rock,” Tony says disbelievingly. Then, after several moments. “What color is it?”

* * *

_Present_

That night at dinner, Nebula says, “Brought you something,” to Morgan. “But you have to eat all your peas first.”

Nebula isn’t convinced that peas are a necessary diet component for a child. Tony was always bribing Morgan to finish the green thing on her plate, though, and she knows he read a lot of books about being a dad. Enough that Pepper had to cut him off at a certain point. 

Morgan makes a face, but finishes her peas. Pepper gives Nebula a surreptitious thumbs up.

Nebula goes to her pack and takes out the container she went out of her way to get on the trip back to earth. Opening it, she slides what appears like a sheet of ice onto a fresh plate and takes it to the table. “Space cake,” she says.

It’s actually just a treat the young ones on Izuli love, but Izulians have similar physiology to humans. Usually things translate fairly well. And Nebula learned a long time ago that putting the word “space” before anything makes Morgan more interested in it.

“Space cake,” Morgan says, sounding torn between suspicion and delight.

“Here,” Nebula breaks a corner piece off. It doesn’t shatter like ice or even brickle. It’s a bit stickier than that. The texture on her tongue is light, a little…melty, almost, the way chocolate is, but nowhere near as rich. Rather, the flavor is a cross between floral and citrus, and neither entirely earth-like. To her surprise, Nebula kind of enjoys it. She normally finds sweets to be too much, the intensity of them an overload on senses that have been purposefully dialed up.

Morgan follows her lead, laughing at the trickle of it on her tongue and saying with her mouth full, “It’s like a sweet tree.”

Rhodey raises an eyebrow at that and takes his own small piece, with Pepper shrugging and leaning over to grab some as well. Nebula thinks she might like it the most out of all of them. It doesn’t matter, because they have a great time finishing it off together while trying, and failing, to tell each other what “it’s like.”

* * *

_Three Years Earlier_

Tony invites her back for Morgan’s second birthday. He sends an actual message through Carol, who has longer range comms than any of the rest of them. Carol shows up alongside the ship and once onboard says, “I’m not a postal service.”

Nebula asks, “Did you need a break?”

Carol isn’t human, not functionally, and so exhaustion doesn’t wear on her the way it does Natasha or Rhodey or Okoye. It still finds its way into the arch of her shoulders. 

She nods. “And he promised you’d bring me back watermelon sours. I really miss watermelon sours.”

“We needed on earth?” Rocket asks.

“Tony’s kid’s second birthday is coming up. You’re invited. I told him to send an interspace transmission and hope you got it in time. He said sparkly lady space telegrams were his preferred method of communication. I described in detail what I could do with my sparkliness. He parried with watermelon sours. Game, set, match.”

Nebula has never been a to a birthday party. They’re not unique to earth, exactly, but they’re also not a universal norm, by any means. And even if they had been, she feels pretty confident in thinking Thanos wouldn’t have been interested. “When is it?”

“A few weeks,” Carol says. “You’ve got time.”

“What type of weaponry can a two year-old human handle?” Rocket asks.

Carol stares at him for a moment. “I’m gonna help you guys with the gift part. I just think it’s for the best.”

Personally, Nebula wholeheartedly agrees.

* * *

Nebula isn’t sure what she expected of a birthday party, but Morgan’s is basically just a day with friends of her parents dropping in, all bearing presents for the birthday girl. Said birthday girl spends most of the day with sticky fingers and some amount of sugar smeared on her face. There are simple games and movies in the movie room throughout.

While Morgan is watching something that appears to be about a lady and a green creature that hops around a lot and has music in it, Nebula sits with Rhodey and Natasha, the latter of whom has been cajoled to attend by the former, and still seems uncertain about being there, despite Pepper’s clear delight at her presence. Natasha sips at a cup of coffee. “Does this seem…restrained, to you?”

Rhodey snorts. “Only because Pepper made him scale it back about six times.”

“Oh.” The syllable is filled with relief. 

“He wanted a full acre of bouncy castles.”

Natasha nods. “That seems more right.”

* * *

“We need to get you a birthday,” Tony says the next morning, when Morgan and Pepper are still sleeping. There are people on the front lawn packing up the bouncy castles Pepper did allow, and several more event staff inside the house, cleaning dishes and otherwise returning the house to rights. 

Tony doesn’t look as if he’s slept, but it’s not the I-can’t-sleep look, it’s the I-had-ideas-all-night look. Nebula says, “I was under the impression one either came with a birthday or…did not.”

“You did come with a birthday, we just don’t happen to know the date.”

“I’m not a child, Tony. I don’t need—”

“You think everything is about need. Did Morgan _need_ that party?”

Nebula frowns. “Morgan is a child.”

“So children need things, but not adults?”

“Adults have learned better.”

“Ah,” Tony says. 

She eyes him. She knows that tone. He disagrees. “Do _you_ need a birthday?”

“We all need moments when we’re reminded of our significance to the people around us, Nibbles R Us. All of us. Those of us who are bad at admitting it the most.”

“And that’s what a birthday is.”

There’s a small tic in his expression she can’t quite read, but after a moment he says, “Yeah. That’s what _your_ birthday would be about, sweetums.”

She rolls her eyes. She also doesn’t argue any more.

* * *

_Present_

“Your birthday’s in a couple of months,” Pepper says the next day. They’re walking along the edge of the lake, Morgan running ahead of them, Rhodey ranging between. 

Nebula glances at her. “Tony made that up.”

“I presumed he had chosen the date. It would have been incredibly coincidental for you to share Maria’s birthday.”

“Mari—his mother. He gave me—” Nebula stumbles, her brain too occupied with this new information to pay attention to her footing. She recovers quickly.

Pepper reaches down and takes her hand, squeezing. “Just because a date to celebrate someone is chosen doesn’t make it made up. You could have been born any day. He gave you that day.”

“I should have—” Nebula presses her lips together, shutting off her own speech.

“Should have,” Pepper says softly, an invitation.

It feels like something is _wrong_ , like a part of her is malfunctioning. “I never told him. Thank you.” Those aren’t the words she means.

Pepper stops walking, and the grip she has on Nebula’s hand brings Nebula to a stop as well. Pepper pulls her so they’re facing each other. “Nebula. He knew. I promise you. He knew.”

There’s not a hint of anything aside from sincerity in Pepper’s body language, the set of her expression. She believes what she’s saying. And Nebula wants to believe her. “How?”

Pepper shrugs. She’s smiling, but her eyes are wet. “Because he told you what day your birthday was, and you came home to him for it.”

* * *

Rhodey goes with her to investigate RoN in person. The ship knows her. It knows her fingerprints, her iris scans, her voice mapping. She should find it terrifying, except for how she knows that information was safer with Tony that it had ever been with Thanos.

She stands in a cockpit that is clearly designed to fit her in every last detail and says, “He shouldn’t have done this.”

“Hm?” Rhodey calls from the engine room, where he’s ogling the tech. It’s a few minutes, but he comes up to the cockpit and repeats, “You said something?”

“I don’t need this, and he could have been doing—” she gets stuck, there are so many other things Tony could have been doing while he was creating this little piece of perfection. “Something that would have helped him.” _Saved him._

Rhodey leans against a console. “Sure. I guess. Tony multi-tasked a lot, so who knows. But also this was his choice. Making this. So you would have it. It was what he wanted to do, should have or not.”

She can’t say what it is about Rhodey’s calm that trips the latch to the door that’s been holding down all her anger at losing her sister _just_ when they had come to terms, at losing the closest thing she’s ever had to an actual father figure, at being left with a sister who flinches at any mention of a familial tie between them, and a ship. Just that the next thing she knows, she’s tearing out of the ship, looking for something to hit, something to _hurt_. She’s not sure when she starts pounding her fists into the ground, or how long she screams. She has no idea when the tears actually start falling. 

By the time she stops, though, her body is exhausted, her breath coming in heavy pants, her heart thudding harshly. What skin is left on her hands is torn and dirtied. She’s nauseated and exhausted, but for the first time in what feels like forever, she thinks she could sleep, not just rest for a bit.

Rhodey, who’s let her do what she needs, pulls her into his chest. “Gonna let me help you get cleaned up?”

“Because you want to,” she says quietly.

He runs a hand down the length of her back. “Yeah. Because I want to.”

“Kay.”

It’s a while before either of them moves.

* * *

Nebula wakes from a nap to see Morgan on her bed, reading a book. “Mog.”

Morgan looks over at her. “Mom said it was okay to be in here as long as I was quiet.”

Nebula wonders when she learned to sleep through Starks being in her space. “What are you reading?”

“Anne of the Island.”

“What’s it about?”

That seems to stump Morgan for a moment. “I guess space doesn’t have Anne of Green Gables.”

Not that Nebula’s aware of. “No?”

“Wait a minute. Don’t. Move.” Morgan gets up and leaves the room.

Despite the clear instructions, Nebula stretches slowly. Her body has repaired much of the damage from her earlier Battle with Planet Earth, but she’s still a tiny bit stiff. Morgan returns shortly, a different book in her hand. She settles back on the bed and says, “This is the first one in the series. Wanna read together?”

“You haven’t read it already?”

“I’ve read all of them. They’re my favorites.”

Nebula rolls over onto her stomach so she and Morgan are side by side. She’s not a reader, but there’s something about this, about Morgan offering to share something that’s a _favorite_ with Nebula, just the two of them. “All right. Let’s read.”

* * *

Pepper finds them there, an hour or so later, still reading. Nebula hears her coming, but finishes a sentence before looking over. “Do you need help?”

Pepper shakes her head. “Happy brought dinner from town.”

“Dinner time?” Morgan asks without looking up.

“Mhm. What’s got my favorite ladies all entranced?” Pepper smiles. “Or do I even need to ask?”

Morgan holds up the front of the book and Pepper laughs, clearly having guessed, but Nebula is stuck on the phrase, “my favorite ladies.” Stuck on the way it pairs her with Morgan. On the chosen bonds between Anne and Diana, and what she suspects will become those between Anne and the Cuthberts.

She misses something, because after a moment, Pepper’s asking, “Coming, Nebula?”

Morgan is already in the hall, the book lying on the bed, a bookmark neatly keeping their spot. Nebula nods and gets up to walk with Pepper. “Yes, I’m joining.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback (but in no way expects or feels entitled to it!!) including:
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